The vocabulary is separated into nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs for the purpose of simplicity.

Click on the English word to see information and examples of that word in use (you probably won’t be able to understand the grammar within the sentences at this point, but it is good to see as you progress through your learning).

A PDF file neatly presenting all of these words and example sentences in addition to common usages and specific notes can be found here.

Want to give your brain practice at recognizing these words? Try finding the words in this vocabulary list in a Word Search.

Notes:
Literally the English pronunciation of “cake” spelled out in Korean

Example:
저는 생일에 케이크를 먹고 싶어요 = I want to eat cake on my birthday
저는 저 케이크를 먹고 싶어요 = I want to eat that cake이 케이크를 만든 사람은 진짜 잘 만들었어요 = the person who made this cake made it really well케이크를 만들 때 쿠키도 만들 거예요 = When I make a cake, I will also make cookies

Notes: In English, I would only go to the “hospital” if I was really sick, and I would “go to the doctor” if I had some minor illness. In Korean, they go to the hospital for minor and major problems. This is because even small doctors’ offices are referred to as a “병원.” If you are really sick, you would probably need to go to a “대학병원.”

Examples:
친구들이랑 공원에서 놀았어요 = I played in the park with friends
저는 남편을 공원에서 만날 거예요 = I will meet my husband at the park저는 아버지랑 공원에 갈 거예요 = I will go to the park with my dad
저는 내일 공원에 갈 거예요 = I am going to the park tomorrow
나는 공원에서 친구를 만났어 = I met a friend at the park우리는 공원에서(/을) 산책했어요 = We went for a walk in the park이 장소는 공원이 될 것이다 = This place will become a park일요일이어서 저는 공원에 가고 싶어요 = It is Sunday, so I want to go to the park

Notes: This is used to refer to one’s head or the hair on one’s head. For example, if you get a haircut, you can say “머리를 잘랐어요.” Note that this does not mean “I cut my head.” To specifically refer to the hair on your head, you can use “머리카락”

Common Usages:
앞다리 = an animal’s front legs
뒷다리 = an animal’s back (hind) legs
양다리 = a way to refer to a person who has two girlfriends or boyfriends
양반다리를 하다 = to cross one’s legs
다리가 후들거리다 = for one’s legs to shake

Example: 다리가 길었으면 좋겠어요 = I wish my legs were long

다리에 있는 문신을 포함하면 저는 문신 네 개가 있어요
= If you include the tattoo on my leg, I have four tattoos

Common Usages:
집에 가다 = to go home
가야 되다 = to have to go
가지 마세요 = don’t go

Examples:
저는 내일 학교에 갈거예요 = Tomorrow I will go to school
저의 친구는 저 쪽으로 갔어요 = My friend went that way
저는 학교에 가서 공부할 거예요 = I will go to school and then study
빨리 집에 가서 쉬세요! = Go home quickly and rest!
저는 캐나다에 가고 싶어요 = I want to go to Canada
어디 가고 싶어요? = Where do you want to go?
어디까지 가고 싶어요? = How far/until when do you want to go?
친구는 학교에 가고 있어요 = My friend is going to school
공부하러 학교에 가고 있어요 = I’m going to school to study
엄마가 어디에 있어요? 병원에 갔어요? = Where is mom? Did she go to the hospital?
엄마가 갔을 때 저는 울었어요 = When mom left, I cried
선생님은 학생들과 박물관에 갔다 = The teacher went to the museum with the students

Common Usages:
만남 = a meeting
친구를 만나다 = to meet a friend
만나서 반갑습니다 = nice to meet you

Example:
저는 어제 친구를 만났어요 = I met a friend yesterday
저는 내일 사람 두 명을 만날거예요 = I will meet two people tomorrow
저는 내일 사람 두 명 더 만날거예요 = I will meet two more people tomorrow
그 사람을 만나고 싶습니까? = Do you want to meet that person?
그 여자를 만난 적이 없어요 = I have never met that girl/I haven’t met that girl
선생님은 내일 학생들을 만날 거예요 = The teacher will meet the students tomorrow
저는 남편을 공원에서 만날 거예요 = I will meet my husband at the park
우리는 며칠 전에 만났어요 = We met a few days ago
우리가 마지막으로 언제 만났지? = When was the last time that we met?

Examples: 저는 문을 닫았어요 = I closed the door
너무 추워서 문을 닫았어요 = I closed the door because it is too cold
문을 닫아야 돼요 = You have to close the door
이 가게는 몇 시에 닫아요? = What time does this store close?
밖이 갑자기 어두워지고 저는 겁이 나서 커튼을 닫아 놓았어요 = Outside got dark all of a sudden, and I was scared so I closed the curtains

Examples:
그것을 어떻게 만들었어요? = How did you make that?
저는 그것을 손으로 만들었어요 = I built that with my hands
저는 친구를 위해 빵을 만들었어요 = I made bread for my friend
누가 피자를 만들었어? = Who made the pizza?
이것을 만들어 주세요 = Please, make this for me
케이크를 만들 때 쿠키도 만들 거예요 = When I make a cake, I will also make cookies
그 단어로 완벽한 문장을 만들어 주세요 = Make a perfect/complete sentence using that word, please

Example:
저는 작은 집에서 살아요 = I live in a small house
이것은 너무 작은가요? = Is this too small?
당근을 작은 조각으로 자르세요 = Cut the carrots into small pieces, please
이 셔츠가 너무 작아서 못 입어요 = I can’t put this shirt on because it is too small이 바지가 너무 작아서 다른 것으로 바꿀 거예요 I’m going to change these pants to another (a different) pair because they are too small

Notes: This word is not used to describe a person, only an object. Instead, it describes that something is old/worn down. To describe a person you should use 늙다. To describe something that is old (but still nice, like a historical building), you should use 오래되다.

Example:
이 학교 건물은 매우 낡아요 = This school’s building is very old이 집은 너무 낡아요 = This house is very old

Notes: Although this translates to “good,” it is often used to say that one “likes” something. The grammar for this is taught in Lesson 15.

Examples:
우리 학교는 매우 좋아요 = Our school is very good저는 우리 학교가 좋아요 = I like our school
그 선생님은 좋아요 = that teacher is good아무 때나 좋아요 = Anytime is good날씨가 좋아서 산책하는 것은 즐거워요 = It is pleasant go to for a walk because the weather is so good

Notes: Though 너무 means “too,” it has gotten to the point in society where Korean people use “너무” to mean “very” as well (especially with the younger generation). Whereas “too” should indicate a negative meaning, 너무 can indicate both a positive and negative meaning. For example, saying “이것은 너무 맛있어요” would not translate to “this is too delicious” but instead “this is very/so delicious.”

Okay, now it is time to get serious. Now it is time to start learning things that you can apply to any verb or any adjective. There are a few things you need to know about Korean verbs and adjectives:

I said this before (twice) but I’m going to say it again. Every Korean sentence must end in either a verb or an adjective (this includes 이다 and 있다). Every sentence absolutely must have a verb or adjective at the end of the sentence.

You should notice (it took me months to notice) that every Korean verb and adjective ends with the syllable ‘다.’ 100% of the time, the last syllable in a verb or adjective must be ‘다.’ Look up at the vocabulary from this lesson if you don’t believe me.

In addition to ending in ‘다’ many verbs and adjectives end with the two syllables ‘하다.’ ‘하다’ means ‘do.’ Verbs ending in 하다 are amazing, because you can simply eliminate the ‘하다’ to make the noun form of that verb/adjective.
Confused? I was at first too. In fact, I don’t think I knew this until 3 months after I started studying Korean – but it is something so essential to learning the language. It is confusing to English speakers because we don’t realize that words can have a verb/adjective form AND a noun form.

For example:
행복하다 = happy
행복 = happiness

성공하다 = succeed
성공 = success

말하다 = speak
말 = speech/words

성취하다 = achieve
성취 = achievement

취득하다 = acquire
취득 = acquisition

You don’t need to memorize those words yet (they are difficult), but it is important for you to realize that ‘하다’ can be removed from words in order to create nouns.

Verbs/adjectives that end in “~하다” are typically of Chinese origin and have an equivalent Hanja (한자) form. Verbs that do not end in “~하다” are of Korean origin and do not have a Hanja form. If you can speak Chinese, you will probably have an advantage at learning more difficult Korean vocabulary, as a lot of difficult Korean words have a Chinese origin.

Korean Verbs

We have already talked about verbs a little bit in previous lessons, but nothing has been formally taught. You learned the basic verb sentence structure in Lesson 1. Let’s look at this again. If you want to say “I eat food” you should know how to use the particles 는/은 and 를/을:

I eat food
I는 food를 eat
To make a sentence, you simply need to substitute the English words with Korean words:
저는 + 음식을 + 먹다
저는 음식을 먹다 = I eat food

*Note – Although the structure of the sentences presented in this lesson is perfect, the verbs are not conjugated, and thus, not perfect. You will learn about conjugating in Lesson 5 and Lesson 6. Before learning how to conjugate, however, it is essential that you understand the word-order of these sentences. However, because of some strange Korean grammatical rules, the sentences provided in the “Adjectives” section are technically perfect but are presented in an uncommon (but simplest) conjugation pattern.

As with the previous lessons, we have attached audio recordings only to sentences that are grammatically correct. Incorrect sentences (due to not being conjugated) do not have audio recordings. Again, you will learn about these conjugations in Lesson 5 and Lesson 6. For now, try to understand the word order of the sentences and how the verbs/adjectives are being used.

As with previous lessons, conjugated examples (one formal and one informal) are provided beneath the un-conjugated examples. Use these only for reference at this point.

Some verbs by default cannot act on an object. Words like: sleep, go, die, etc. You cannot say something like “I slept home”, or “I went restaurant”, or “I died her.” You can use nouns in sentences with those verbs, but only with the use of other particles – some of which you have learned already (~에) and some that you will learn in later lessons. With the use of other particles you can say things like:

I slept at home
I went to the restaurant
I died with her

We will get into more complicated particles in later lessons, but here I want to focus on the purpose of ~를/을 and its function as an object particle.

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Korean Adjectives

Korean adjectives, just like Korean verbs are placed at the end of a sentence. The main difference between verbs and adjectives is that an adjective can never act on an object. Notice, in the sentences below that there is no object being acted on.
Adjectives are very easy to use. Just put them into the sentence with your subject. (Remember that the examples in parentheses show sentences that have been conjugated which you have not learned yet.)

Note that due to weird Korean grammatical rules regarding adjectives, the un-conjugated sentences below are actually grammatically correct as they are. Therefore, we provided audio examples for the un-conjugated sentences and not the conjugated sentences (although all are correct). You will learn about this weird rule and how to conjugate adjectives in Lesson 5.

There is one confusing thing about translating sentences with Korean adjectives to English. Notice that in all examples above, the words “am/is/are/etc…” are used. In English, these words need to be used when using an adjective:

I am fat
He is fat
They are fat

Remember, the translation for “am/is/are” to Korean is “이다.” However, you do not use “이다” when writing a sentence like this in Korean. Within the meaning of Korean adjective is “is/am/are.” Early learners are always confused by this. The confusion stems from the fact that it is done differently in English and Korean. Please, from here on, abandon what you know of grammar based on English – it will only hold you back.

You will find that words like “my/our/their/his/her” are often omitted from sentences. As you will learn continuously throughout your Korean studies, Korean people love shortening their sentences wherever possible. Whenever something can be assumed by context, words are often omitted from sentences to make them more simple. For example:

좋아하다 gets formed by removing ‘다’ from 좋다 and adding 아 + 하다. There is a reason for why this is done, and there is an explanation for how it is done – but you do not need to know this yet. For now, just understand that:

좋다 is an adjective which cannot act on an object
좋아하다 is a verb which can act on an object

We, Us, and Our (우리)

At this point I would also like to introduce you to the word “우리” which you can see from the vocabulary list of this lesson translates to “us” or “we.” In English, even though they are technically the same word, the usage of “us” or “we” depends on its location within the sentence it is used in. Just like “I” and “me”, if the word is the subject of a sentence, “we” is used. For example:

I like you
We like you

However, if the word is the object in a sentence, the word “us” is used. For example:

He likes me
He likes us

In Korean, they do not make this distinction, and “우리” is used in both situations. For example:

우리는 너를 좋아하다 = We like you
(우리는 너를 좋아해)I deliberately didn’t include a formal version of the conjugated sentence above because it is usually awkward to say the word “you” politely in Korean. We’ll get to this in a later lesson.

By placing the possessive particle “의” after “우리” we can create the meaning of “our”. While this can be done, I feel it is much more common to omit this particle when it is used with “우리.” In fact, the particle “의” is very commonly omitted from words other than “우리” as well. However, I don’t suggest thinking about doing this until you have a better grasp of the language. At this point, I only suggest that you do this with “우리.” For example:

A formal version of “우리” is “저희”. However, even in formal situations it is acceptable to use “우리”. At this point, you haven’t even begun to learn about the different levels of formality of Korean, so I don’t want you to get too worried about this word.